Progress thread

[wilddog]

Thanks for the info Anthonius and great pictures of your old mod. Not sure if you saw but the model you posted which you said had vertices assigned to 3 joints wasn't actually the case. When loaded back as a mesh it actually has the standard 2 joint assignment which is what we thought given that the mesh can only hold 2 weight values per vertex and only uses 2 quad values to sore the joint number. I wasn't sure if it was somehow defaulting due to not adding up to a combined 1.00 but even that wasn't the case as all that happens was when you load back to MTW2, one joint was dropped and its weight was added to one of the remaining joints.

[AnthoniusII]

Thanks for the info Anthonius and great pictures of your old mod. Not sure if you saw but the model you posted which you said had vertices assigned to 3 joints wasn't actually the case. When loaded back as a mesh it actually has the standard 2 joint assignment which is what we thought given that the mesh can only hold 2 weight values per vertex and only uses 2 quad values to sore the joint number. I wasn't sure if it was somehow defaulting due to not adding up to a combined 1.00 but even that wasn't the case as all that happens was when you load back to MTW2, one joint was dropped and its weight was added to one of the remaining joints.

That is why i sent the skelmerge. file to use it with GOAT.
If lance waveving works with two bones that's fine but after i merge the lancer with the proper skeleton i have these results.
Lances when lancers just standing.

Lances when lancers move.

Lances when charging or in this case when impact.

If you have the same result with two bone assignments that is for better.
EDIT: Markhaselb's animation fixed the legs positions in all stages plus corrected the lance holding by the lancers.

[makanyane]

AnthoniusII - I tried to explain in pm to you

Re; the Magyar_Knights_lod0.mesh:

I don't think the .mesh is doing what you think it is though! I can see the .ms3d you sent has the assignment to 3 bones
(pbase, pflag and prot) - but we've just run analysis on the .mesh and the verts for it in that seem to have been rounded down to use only 2 bones. So I think most of flag is using a combination of pbase and pflag, and only the very tip is using pflag and prot

The flag is using three bones - but the individual vertexes within it (in game in your mod) are not, they're only using 2 of the bones at a time.

So yes your flag is being manipulated by three bones, which gives a great detailed result. But the question we were trying to confirm was could an individual vertex be weighted to three bones in the .mesh file - because it would be useful for things like around the groin area to weight to Rthigh+Lthigh+Pelvis - and the answer is the .mesh files including yours don't have that... Each vertex in the .mesh format only has a slot for two bone weights!

[AnthoniusII]

Sorry that i misunderstood . Yes such a "weight" would solve many clipings between the central body vertices and many arms ones.

[makanyane]

The whole thing about stopping bodyparts poking through cloaks hoods etc is driving me round the bend at the moment... but I am at least getting the hang of some tricks to weight painting in Blender

[makanyane]

PKH version of animated bow - this uses the separate weapon bone system and doesn't add main skeleton bones (so doesn't cause the death anim bug).

The bow is mainly assigned to the left hand but part weighted to Weapon01 and 02 bones to give the string movement an flex, and assigned via primary weapon anim. Arrow is weighted to Weapon03 and 04* and assigned in modeldb via primary shield anim.

Earlier version of this I tried hiding the moving arrow in the quiver and assigning it's bone to the Torso - this unfortunately doesn't work when the archers do their non-animated realignment to fire over walls etc. So this version has the arrow bones assigned to hand and arrow squished to fit in the hand when not animated.


Thanks to xHolyCrusader for explaining how to hide arrows, and thanks to wilddog for fixing the WIP IWTE mesh/anim process to allow 4th weapon bone and 2 weapon bones each for 'weapon' and 'shield' anim.


*yes that bit is new... but seems to work

[MightyPotato]

Hey there, I'm really glad to hear that work is ongoing on this mod, and I really love the building and vegetation re-designing! Having a full building and vegetation graphical overhaul done would be a dream come true! Btw I have dropped a lot of my attempts at working on vegetation etc and I've started my own thread in which I have been overhauling Medieval 2 factions for the mid-13th century. I thought you guys might want to use/see them (although there is not much there as of now), so the link is in my signature. Keep up the good work!

[makanyane]

Thank you MightyPotato!

I've already had a look at your overhaul mod - someone on discord already suggested it as a good reference - there's some lovely looking units in there

I'm dithering about whether to use units from other mods or not at the moment, as we've already got a reasonable way through sorting out ours, and I'd like to see them 'in action' - also in the process, we're ending up with non-standard skeleton poses/anims which wouldn't help in terms of merging other units in...

[stevietheconquer]

amazing work!

[MightyPotato]

Yes, I understand the excitement when creating units and finally seeing them in game, it truly is great ! Your units already look very good, so I wasn't really suggesting you use mine entirely, but you might need some of the model pieces or texturing ideas (I know I had a very hard time figuring out colour schemes for each faction, and I had to look at many mods, sources and wargaming pages before I could make up my mind, especially concerning Scotland ).

Concerning the skeletons and animations, I am also quite a perfectionist and I've been wanting to solve many of the little anim bugs etc on units for a while now, so if you guys plan to release them at some point, I'll be a taker (especially if you manage to make a crossbow without winch anim)!

[wilddog]

I'm trying to sort out the next version of IWTE and it should support blender/Max on a standard skeleton with weapons/shields. Not so sure on mods that went through a process of adding bones though as the limit is still the same.

[makanyane]

Concerning the skeletons and animations, I am also quite a perfectionist and I've been wanting to solve many of the little anim bugs etc on units for a while now, so if you guys plan to release them at some point, I'll be a taker (especially if you manage to make a crossbow without winch anim)!

I'm probably going to release this guy and anims as a stand-alone thing soon. It's a flag bearer officer with the flag animated using the weapon bones instead of adding new bones.

It will be a fairly minimal set of anims (no idle variety) but the basic set is still quite a lot of anims

Dodgy video of him in his one and only fighting stance;

[stevietheconquer]

the flag bearer can kill a king with that flag!great animations!

[makanyane]

And the flagbearer officer is released here: https://www.twcenter.net/forums/down...o=file&id=4595

If anyone who knows how to add units/anims (I'm not supporting "how do I add units/animations" queries!) would like to play with him, he's free to use with credit to PKH. If anyone does use him in their mod I'd be grateful for feedback! So far the principle of using 4 weapon bones for the flag seems to be working really well... but he's probably the first instance of anyone trying it so it would be useful to know if I've missed any issues!

[makanyane]

I've spent most of this month getting a flag-bearer for cavalry working - and producing textures for the faction flags - still part way through textures...
Currently I'm putting in 3x the flag bearer as officer add-ons for each unit, that seems to give a reasonable amount of flags spread over the battlefield.

I'm tweaking the models to fix problems with faces and arms whilst doing this, and those changes need to be carried over back into the main units.

[AnthoniusII]

My knight horse is free to download. Are you sure that you do not wish to sent you a basic MARKA medium horse to allow you change colors according to faction?
TGC uses almost 15 variants with 4 textures of 8 horses with 8 sudles each.
Or you can use my tutorial to make your own versions.
MARKA team was a team of proffesionals used ZBrush to make their normal map textures.
See that exept their muscles even vains are visible.

.... My tutorial is here.

[makanyane]

Thanks but I really am attached to our horses...

I've morfed ours onto a version of the Marka skeleton though and that seems to work better - there's currently only the one skin texture fixed but I've got a layout that works reasonably. He's also got a jaw bone addition so there'll be some "chomping at the bit". Pics include animated flags, I kept them "flowing in the wind" whilst idle as with larger flags it got too jerky having them come up from drooping to horizontal through some of the anim cycles.

[stevietheconquer]

a horse can be your best friend

[AnthoniusII]

Thanks but I really am attached to our horses...

I've morfed ours onto a version of the Marka skeleton though and that seems to work better - there's currently only the one skin texture fixed but I've got a layout that works reasonably. He's also got a jaw bone addition so there'll be some "chomping at the bit". Pics include animated flags, I kept them "flowing in the wind" whilst idle as with larger flags it got too jerky having them come up from drooping to horizontal through some of the anim cycles.

A model creation or a texture one is a matter of taste and not a matter of right or wrong. My passion for horses and details lead me to one observation. Take a look of your horses legth comparing to their body's one. They seam a bit short. Just an observation.

[makanyane]

I know what you mean... they're actually correct technical proportions in 3d program - they look too long in body/short in height in game using 1920 x 1050 screen which that was, and too short in body/tall in height in squarer screen proportions. Apart from 'I shouldn't screenshot in widescreen mode' I don't really know what to do about that!